10 ms·

This is cute, but it is based on a flawed premise. There are not "prices" for medical procedures and even the providers don't know what they are going to charg

• ulfw 13y ago
  WOW just wow. Would have been cheaper to fly first class to any other country in the world and get the baby there. It's really time for significant overhaul of the health care system here in the US
  • mw67 13y ago
    Yes, in France its about 100 to 200 euros.
    • refurb 13y ago
      That's the total cost to the French medical system for a normal delivery? I find that hard to believe. In Canada that rate is a couple thousand dollars. Or is that what the patient has to pay?
      • galenko 13y ago
        Come to the UK, it's free.
        • lovskogen 13y ago
          It's also free in Norway.
          • ghayes 13y ago
            There is no free lunch?
            • petercooper 13y ago
              There might be. The US government spends way more money per head on public healthcare than the UK (and only slightly less than Norway) and that's totally separate to all the private spending! http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jun/30/healthcare-spending-world-country http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jun/30/healthc... Procedures are so expensive, doctors so highly paid, and insurers so profitable that the US is essentially subsidizing all that while still not providing universal healthcare. In the UK we're both taxed less AND don't have to have private insurance due to the above. (It does have some downsides though, particularly in not being able to easily 'shop around' or get access to cutting edge/experimental medicine.. it's a bit one size fits all.)
              • aestra 13y ago
                Nobody in the United States gets access to cutting edge/experimental medicine either. Insurances just won't pay for it. They say "too experimental" and "not medically nessessary" is a reason not to pay. I am currently in a 3rd level of appeal to get my insurance company to pay for my medication they claim is "too experimental" (it isn't by the way!!!)
              • switch007 13y ago
                A top-level policy with Bupa/Pru will get you easy access to top hospitals in the UK (including London), for diagnostics at least. I just got a quote for £70/mo (it will almost double if you claim, however). EDIT: hm, not sure about 'experimental', but top quality/teaching hospitals anyway.
    • TomaszZielinski 13y ago
      Really? In Poland the state pays ~$500 and that's it. And they are not famous for being generous :)
  • bambax 13y ago
    Yes, if I had to pay 20k to just have a baby and could fly somewhere else where it's free, I'd chance it. There might be a problem that many airlines won't let pregnant women fly past a certain number of months, for fear they will deliver the baby in the air; so maybe you have to move to the target country months in advance, significantly adding to the total cost...?
    • huherto 13y ago
      If flying is a problem, you may drive to Canada or Mexico. Mexico has a pretty good private system that is used by the local middle and upper classes. This is from my hometown...http://www.chihuahuamedicalcity.com/ http://www.chihuahuamedicalcity.com/
    • jules 13y ago
      You can take quite a long vacation for 20k.
    • GFischer 13y ago
      Doesn't need to be free - the very best healthcare in my country (Uruguay) would cost about five thousand dollars per year of coverage, and we're talking about something better than the average US hospital - www.hospitalbritanico.org.uy . Those five thousand would cover 90% of the expenses involved in all steps of pregnancy (prenatal care and checkups, 4D ultrasound imaging, etc) and the delivery itself. And living here a few months would cost way less than 15.000 dollars :)
• matwood 13y ago
  Dispute all of it and the bill will likely be way less than 20k. I had mallet finger once and I got a bill of thousands of dollars and charge for a broken finger, then a set, and multiple check up visits. In reality I went to the doctor once, got an xray, he gave me a splint and said don't take it off for 8 weeks. I never went back for a second visit because it wasn't needed assuming I followed the treatment of did not bend my finger for 8 weeks. I called billing and asked for an explanation and the bill went from a couple thousand to a couple hundred.
  • x0054 13y ago
    This is exactly why I get so pissed about the Affordable Care Act! We are not solving the problem of why medical care in USA is so outrageously expensive, we instead are solving the problem of how to pay for it. The problem is, once most people have insurance, there will be no political will to solve the much more complex and important problem of reducing the healthcare costs for everyone. Incidentally, totally agree. In any hospital, all you have to do is dispute the charges and demand documentation, and all of the sudden the bill is slashed tenfold! So, basically, the system is setup to screw the uninsured americans who may not know their rights or have the ability to challenge the hospital.
    • adamlett 13y ago
      > We are not solving the problem of why medical care in USA is so outrageously expensive, we instead are solving the problem of how to pay for it. Perhaps, but to the individual, the first problem is by far the gravest. One can feel outraged if the taxpayers are paying too much in general, but that is not exactly a life or death situation like not being able to pay for medical aid. Also: Why can't you fix both problems?
      • sp332 13y ago
        Forcing people to pay for health insurance they don't want to drive down the cost of healthcare seems backwards. The pressure should be on insurance companies to make insurance more appealing.
• refurb 13y ago
  Wow. The average reimbursement for a non-complicated birth in most US hospitals is around $3-5K. You are correct though, the reason why hospitals do this is because the system is entirely setup to support this kind of behavior.
• ivanca 13y ago
  Point is, you got robbed and didn't go to court for it.
• mathnode 13y ago
  woh woh woh hold on....20k to give birth? I am amazed the US is still breeding.
• bananacurve 13y ago
  >Needless to say that this American hospital would not even have admitted us without a certified check in advance Well you ended up screwing yourself. Maybe you have never spoken to an American who didn't have health insurance and so didn't know, but, medical bills are settled later for less than half the insurance price and all hospitals have to admit you regardless of ability to pay by federal law championed by Kennedy.
• aestra 13y ago
  >Needless to say that this American hospital would not even have admitted us without a certified check in advance. An emergency room cannot refuse treatment to a women in labor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and...
  • codequickly 13y ago
    I worked at ER. No, you don't want to have a baby in ER. ER doctors are dealing with emergency situations and patients (auto accident,cardiac arrests,gunshot wounds,etc). I've seen one baby being delivered in ER, and it wasn't a good experience for the patient. Rather, you'd want proper pre-natal care and comfortable delivery room, with your own doctor. Also, ER treatments are more expensive. Way more expensive.
• 3pt14159 13y ago
  My question is how are they not criminally charged with fraud when this happens? I could understand if this only happens once in a while, that it isn't done intentionally, but it happens all the fucking time, so someone is clearly intentionally doing it. If you hold a man hostage for a month or a year you go to jail for a year or two. If you intentionally overbill a man so that he must work an extra year worst case scenario you... send a sternly written letter and pay them the original amount?
  • phillmv 13y ago
    WELL, if we're talking about INTENTIONALITY then yes the american medical bureaucratic system as evolved obviously singles out the uninsured and proceeds to screw them over. If we're talking about mens rea, then I doubt it; my wager is tied to how it's in no one's incentive to care that leads to these outcomes. Medical providers are clueless and totally disconnected from administrative functions, hospital billing systems are optimized towards dealing with horrible leviathans that spew sulphur and vomit acid and all of this operates on a scale that makes makes the cost of delivering babies a rounding error. I'd imagine someone forgot to properly code the procedures/the paperwork isn't set up to give a shit and they were simply charged the default set of procedures. Blah blah, single payer public systems, blah blah aligning incentives around cost structures, etc. Atul Gawande has a great few articles on this.
    • 3pt14159 13y ago
      IMO there is a guilty mind somewhere in that hospital. After seeing bill after bill come back wrong and without blowing a whistle / fixing the problem they are obviously accepting that they are lying to a good portion of their client base.
    • ada1981 13y ago
      My father is close friends with someone who runs a large hospital in Texas -- he told us that it is quite routine to overbill, and that they allow for up to 5% over billing. It's a line item in their balance sheet and they actually rely in this as a predictable revenue source. For an industry of people who have had to spend over a decade jumping through academic hoops, and whose job seems to require a great deal of precision, it is unbelievable they lack competence in something most high school drop outs master McDonalds - namely, standardized pricing and itemized billing (not to mention customer service).
• yodsanklai 13y ago
  "I got a reply in writing that it was $20k" That sounds unbelievable! how can it be? it has to be a marginal case. I know at least two people that had babies in the US and barely pay anything (neither for the delivery nor for other medical acts before and after). They were PhD students or postdocs. What I am wondering is on average how much an american pays for having a baby?
  • aestra 13y ago
    Those people probably had health insurance and did not pay out of pocket, their insurance footed the bill. I know someone who paid out of pocket for a delivery and I think they said it was around $12K.
  • joshkaufman 13y ago
    It's not an edge case: we were quoted that price a few years ago. We carry high deductible insurance, and that was before the recent US health care legislation mandated maternity coverage. (Before it passed, most insurers refused to provide maternity coverage outside of large groups, or charged insane prices, since the probability of a claim was so high.) In the end, we opted for homebirth midwifery care, which was fantastic in every way. We ended up paying around $2k for six months of prepartum care, delivery, and six weeks of postpartum care. In the event of an emergency, insurance would've covered a hospital transfer. It was such a good experience we did the same thing for #2, and we're planning on delivering at home if we have more children in the future.
• vijayr 13y ago
  $20K for a normal delivery? that sends shivers down my spine. I knew healthcare is expensive, but this is insane.
• clarebear 13y ago
  Next time, try a midwife if you and your wife are comfortable with home birth. In the Denver area it runs about $3k for parental care, the birth, and post birth check ups. Also, you don't have to deal with hospitals. I had one of my kids at home with a midwife and I wish it would have been both. If you actually need one, then the midwife will take you to a hospital.
  • novalis78 13y ago
    that's exactly what we did. 12k the hospital, 6k the birthing home and the midwife charged 3k. When we asked her about the price, she "admitted" feeling "guilty". She said "it's still way too high, but I get in trouble from the birthing homes, if I charge less". Talking about "market prices". There are none (yet).
  • mneedham 13y ago
    Unless you have one of dozens (hundreds?) of potential complications that can happen during childbirth and you don't make it to the hospital in time. They you've got a dead or severely brain damaged baby and a potentially dead mom. Totally worth it. And the odds of making it to the hospital in time if you need an emergency c-section or start bleeding out are pretty slim.
    • novalis78 13y ago
      Obviously you haven't done your research on this topic yet. The midwives are state registered and are legally bound to only serve woman who are in perfect health condition, with no complication during pregnancy whatsoever and prefer woman who had previous births without complications. Still, hospital is on standby and yes, it makes more sense if you are not 100 miles away from one.
    • clarebear 13y ago
      Actually, experienced mid-wives are very good at recognizing problems before they become serious problems. At some point, I was running out of energy and starting to struggle. They have monitoring equipment for the baby, and checked on her first to make sure she was fine. They talked about transporting me, but decided to give me a tablespoon of honey first. It worked, and we were done with a healthy, happy outcome shortly after that. With midwives, you actually have human attention on you during a birth, rather than doctors and nurses that drop in occasionally and can miss stuff. My hospital birth came closer to having problems because there was another emergency on the floor and no one paid attention to me for hours (when perhaps they should have).
• thesis 13y ago
  Wow. Next time shop around a little. We did and the hospital stay for my wife and baby was around 2800. Our doc was 2700. The anesthesiologist was a shocking 2500 though. Our doc and the hospital had to be prepaid, or else we would be charged higher rates. Some places call them "Stork plans"
• carlosrt 13y ago
  Companies, like Safeway, that self insure pay $3,000 to $5,000 per procedure. For example: Colonoscopy: $897 Breast excision of lesion procedure: $2,569 Gall bladder procedure: $4,212 Cardiac Catheterization (no angioplasty or stints): $4,900 Knee Arthroscopy: $3,039 I wrote about it here: http://www.quora.com/Medicine-and-Healthcare/What-are-some-of-the-most-mind-blowing-facts-about-US-healthcare/answer/Carlos-Tobin http://www.quora.com/Medicine-and-Healthcare/What-are-some-o... The CEO of SafeWay, started a company that sells this data. Unfortunately its typically only sold to companies that self insure and have ~10,000 employees. You can watch him talk about the data and the company here: http://coe.berkeley.edu/static/streaming/gtl-conference/2009/recording-part-1.html http://coe.berkeley.edu/static/streaming/gtl-conference/2009...
• larrys 13y ago
  "I got a reply in writing that it was $20k" What did the reply in writing actually say? Seems almost as if this was merely a "retainer" paid in advance against the expected cost.